• yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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    8 days ago

    So slavery. Let’s just arrest and throw people in prison for bullshit reasons to get slaves.

    Great.

    /s

    • beliquititious
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      8 days ago

      That’s why we have police in the first place. After the civil war the South, in order to covertly recapture as many recently freed slaves as possible, created vagrancy laws, sundown towns, and armed police. In Alabama, where the video is set, the state made it illegal for black people to leave a job, once they took it. The police in the south, especially in Alabama and Louisiana, arrested thousands of former slaves and leased them out to local businesses, in some cases victims of that system would be put to work at the same place, for the same people where they were enslaved prior to the emancipation declaration.

      It’s one of the most fucked up and evil things America has done. It’s made even worse because the practice has been in use for over 200 years and no one, outside a small percentage of Americans even care.

      Private prisons and work-release programs need to be ended now.

  • sakodak@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    “. . . . except as a punishment for crime . . . .”

    Slavery never stopped, it just evolved. There’s a reason black men are so overrepresented in the prison system.

    The US is a fascist country. If you live here and you don’t feel it, you are benefiting from it.

  • Nastybutler@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    The warden of Shawshank blew his brains out when he was caught doing this very thing. Now they’re doing it in the open with no consequences

  • FarFarAway@startrek.website
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    8 days ago

    This is how they plan on filling all the gaps left by all the immigrants they want to deport. Next up are new laws that put even more people / groups of people, in prison.

    • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Well, a lot. Stupid question. Both are slavery, yes, but chattel slavery in the US south was a special type and it really hurts modern slavery causes to equate them. Please stop doing this if you actually care about stopping modern slavery.

      First off - when the prisoners have children, the prison doesn’t own that child. The child has an opportunity to stay with family. That’s markedly different. It’s not like generations of prisoners have been born in a prison, lived there their whole lives, and died on that same prison - that happened on plantations. It’s not like a prison can take your baby and bait alligators with it. They can’t force your child to help them bathe. They can’t rape your 15 year old sister, Sally Hemmings, and force her to act as Thomas Jefferson’s sex slave for decades.

      Prisoners are allowed to read and write and practice their own religions. Prisoners are allowed to learn math.

      There are laws meant to protect prisoners from brutality. At the time of antebellum slavery, while it was generally illegal to kill a slave needlessly, it was not illegal to beat or punish them and if they happened to die, that was not usually considered part of that law. LaLaurie in Louisiana is an example of someone who violated that law - it had to be particularly obscene and cruel (note that she was charged previously for cruelty to slaves, probably would have been charged for this, but fled mob justice).

      Yes, I agree with you that it’s slavery and personally there’s a lot more slavery than that here (children are parents’ property). I agree that chattep slavery gave birth to this prison system slavery too. I don’t think it’s helpful to compare it to that specific type of slavery as if it’s the exact same.

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Are they being paid? Do they get “good behavior” added to the record and reduced time sentences for working?

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      8 days ago

      You’re seeing how the game is played. It’s easy to set the system up where refusing to work makes your life significantly worse.

  • Match!!@pawb.social
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    8 days ago

    Colorado passed a state constitutional amendment to ban this practice 6 years ago and it’s been tied up in lawsuits ever since